Lift up Through Literacy

Lift Up Through Literacy: Adolescents Learning, Achieving, Becoming

· Learning to read and write · Impacting content areas with strategies · Finding literacy strengths · Taking control of literacy learning

RLTC History with Literacy Development of Adolescents  Provided Reading First Foundation training to special educators K-12.  Regional Literacy Training Center Directors requested presentations to learn about the MDE ELA HSCE model units during the 2006/07 school year. Purpose Establish a statewide literacy initiative that will improve high school achievement, high school graduation rates, and college readiness rates for middle and high school students. Goals Adolescent striving readers and writers have the right to  Know their literacy strengths  Have appropriate level of materials to read  Practice their literacy skills daily  Instruction geared to their strengths and scaffolded to independence  Know multiple ways to access content materials  Develop literacy skills demanded by the work place  Instruction from expert and trained teachers

Description of Work 1. Create web-based programs to provide literacy support for adolescents: Access to Content Courses: Reading and Writing Strategies within content area courses that increase the access all students have to learning the content and skills in science, mathematics, social studies and English literature. Literacy Assessment System: Assessments for determining the students’ strengths in the acquisition and progress in reading, writing, speaking, listening, viewing and representing.

Literacy Interventions:  Workshops (one or two weeks) providing specific skill development, direct instruction (to, with, and by), engaged learners, and guided practice to acquisition of the skill.  PowerPoint presentations, pod casts, and video presentations for explaining specific skills. 2. Preparation of proposal for potential striving reader federal funding

Progress on Work RLTC Retreat – July … Two day retreat in Charlevoix many of the RLTC directors and other literacy leaders from their region met (approximately 20 people) and began the planning for an adolescent literacy program. A framework was established, plans were created for how the work would be accomplished and work dates were established (August 28, September 4, October 10, and November 8).

Striving Reader Proposal Planning on August 28, 2007 Patti Loper, Bill Devers and Elaine Weber met to review requirements for programs qualifying for previous striving reader funding. The proposed program from the July retreat was reviewed to assure that what was developed would meet the requirements of the federal striving reader funded programs.

Assessment System / Workshop Planning and Development September 4, 2007 RLTC directors and literacy leaders (28 participants) met to learn Web 2.0 programs that would be used to upload the assessments and workshops on the web. Work was divided among the participants to be accomplished by the October meeting: Reading fluency, comprehension, critical reading, writing fluency, writing development, protocols for looking at student work and the framework for the workshops. The striving reader proposal group also established a division of work among the members.

Access to the Content Courses The Michigan-created program MiCLASS/HiCLASS is being uploaded on the web and now called Take FLIGHT in the Content Areas (Functional Literacy Instruction Generating Higher-Level Thinking) by a local group of educators from Macomb county: Lynn Mair, Rose Harrision, Rita Hughes, Grace Velchansky, Carrie Wozniak, and Elaine Weber. The work on this project will presented to the larger group at the November 8th meeting to be reviewed and expanded.

Timeline for the Project Lift Up Through Literacy will be completed by Spring of 2008 and ready for pilots during the 2008/09 school year. Proposal for federal funding will be ready by late fall 2007 or early in 2008.

Timeline Modification At the RLTC meeting held October 9th directors were told that the Reading First money could not be used for the above described initiative.

October 10th meeting was cancelled. Work continued on both the project by Macomb consultants and teachers.

November 8th meeting was rescheduled and representatives from Charlevoix Center, Wayne RESA and Macomb meet to continue work on the statewide project. The December 12th meeting is also going as scheduled.

January 29th we met in Ingham, and we are meeting again on February 27th.